Epic buys Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly

Epic Games has bought People Can Fly, the developer of Gears of War: Judgment.

11

Epic Games has made an honest studio of Gears of War: Judgment dev People Can Fly, five years after acquiring the majority stake in the company. Epic head Mark Rein said the studio buy-out led to the departure of three PCF studio heads: Adrian Chmierlarz, Andrzej Poznanski, and Michal Kosieradzki.

"We doubled down on People Can Fly," Rein said. "It was something we always hoped to do."

But we'll be hearing more from at least one of those names, as Rein also told Polygon that Epic will be "helping [Chmierlarz] with some future announcements."

Rein says the company had "a really cool prototype, awesome art and design" when Epic found them, and handed them the PC version of Gears of War. That led to other Gears of War ports, Bulletstorm, and now Judgment. Reign says the absence of the three departing figures won't impact Judgment's development.

This comes just on the heels of Epic buying and re-branding the former Big Huge Games to Impossible Games. It's one of five subsidiaries, including Chair, Epic Japan, and Epic Korea. Most of them are constantly developing games, and Epic always has its popular Unreal Engine to fall back on. So when Epic takes over the entire gaming industry and you're playing on your EpicBox, remember this year as the one they began to consolidate power.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 13, 2012 9:15 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Epic buys Gears of War: Judgment developer People Can Fly.

    Epic Games has bought People Can Fly, the developer of Gears of War: Judgment.

    • reply
      August 13, 2012 9:26 AM

      You mean "Painkiller Developer People can Fly" right? I mean that is what they are known for.

      • reply
        August 13, 2012 9:35 AM

        Didn't People Can Fly do Bulletstorm, too?

      • reply
        August 13, 2012 11:11 AM

        There aren't many Painkiller developers there anymore. IIRC, most of the engine devs went over to Flying Wild Hog.

        I don't think anyone can rightfully call them "Painkiller developer People Can Fly". Feel free to say "Gears: Judgment developer" or "Bulletstorm developer", but Painkiller was eight years ago, and most of those leads are elsewhere now.

        • reply
          August 13, 2012 11:29 AM

          So basically "random dev with painkiller dev's name still attached"? IE - who cares?

          • reply
            August 13, 2012 12:50 PM

            Yeah. I hope they make something that redefines them and puts them back on the map, but it probably won't be PC FPS, and Bulletstorm's portiness was disappointing. They could very well end up being Mark Rein's journeyman developer, stuck on side-story games like Gears: Judgment until they close down.

    • reply
      August 13, 2012 9:34 AM

      Weird. I thought they bought them a long time ago.

      • reply
        August 13, 2012 9:37 AM

        According to WP, Epic had a majority share in PCF since 2007; this only moves to full ownership.

    • reply
      August 13, 2012 9:34 AM

      If these boys left Adrian Chmierlarz, Andrzej Poznanski, and Michal Kosieradzki then that tells me that they where not in agreement with EPIC "buying" them.
      They took their cool idea and mothballed it. I knew it when I played it. I loved Bulletstorm, but I knew EPIC wasn't behind it 100% cause Gears was like 2 steps away from launch.
      So I'm glad they left, so they are free to make the kinds of games they and I want to play. Not Gear clones, which seems to be all EPIC can do.
      Oh that and push the new engine on everyone. These guys are worse than crack dealers.

      • reply
        August 13, 2012 7:12 PM

        They have this cool IP and this cool engine, how is that a bad thing? Why are they worse than crack dealers? Its normal they try to sell both. I would too!

        • reply
          August 14, 2012 6:09 AM

          Everything out of theirs mouths is how next-gen is where its at..question is, for what?
          So that they can make more photorealistic shooters?
          EPIC isn't known for fantastic game design. They make pretty things that you shoot down.
          Take Firaxis for example, they make fantastic games. Games with substance and meat. You don't hear them talking about bleeding edge, unreal engines and bullshit.
          They are peddlers, nice engine or not.
          Now if EPIC was designing games that required horse power because content wise gamers were going to experience something never seen before, but in all my years of gaming history has taught me that better hardware just means the same ol' crap with prettier graphics.
          If that's the case, then stay put.
          Why wont EPIC SHOW us the games that will herald this new era of hardware?
          Rather than pimp out their engine?

          The buying of PCF, is simply more grunts to spit out more Gears clones out of the EPIC machine. I guarantee that's why the 3 founders left. That's not what they signed up for. They want to be creative and think outside the box.

          EPIC is like Xerox. You all know the story. They had the worlds first GUI, but they are copy machine heads, couldn't see the forest for the trees. So they gave it away to Steve Jobs.
          Same here, all EPIC can see is pushing their tech cause that's a revenue stream for them. New hardware, new platforms and all that...I wonder why? cause I haven't seen the killer app yet.

          • reply
            August 15, 2012 9:28 AM

            So what you are saying is that Epic will ultimately fail because they don't make strategy games.

Hello, Meet Lola